


Speculum Mundi

by yuletide_archivist



Category: Il nome della rosa | The Name of the Rose - Umberto Eco
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-12-20
Updated: 2006-12-20
Packaged: 2018-01-25 05:39:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,188
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1634429
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yuletide_archivist/pseuds/yuletide_archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the future, Brother William will resign his post as Inquisitor. At that moment, he will remember her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Speculum Mundi

**Author's Note:**

> Written for SJ Kasabi

 

 

The First Day

The woman, barely a girl out of her novitiate, was beautiful by every worldly measure, that much was never under question. Even filthy, ragged, and bound--or perhaps because of that--she held the eye and stirred unrighteous pity in the breast of even the most uninterested observer. Only to be uninterested in this case would be a blissful dream, out of his reach while William retained his office.

"Pardon us, Brother William." One of the archbishop's men gave a jerk of his head to William as they dragged the girl down the corridor to the cell that could well be her last home, unless she was far luckier than she looked.

William ignored them, focused only on the woman who was about to become his, albeit in a far different sense than she had recently belonged to one of William's less happy brothers. She took no notice of him. Her eyes stared at some emptiness before her; they had been at her already, he could see it clearly. Nonetheless, her eyes were beautiful even in their blankness, dark like the depths of the sea, the heights of the firmament. They had torn her habit from her, leaving her indecent in her torn under dress, her slender limbs jerking as she stumbled as though each limb were possessed by its own demon.

The archbishop might be expecting just such a verdict in the end, though privately William doubted such theories more often than he held with them. It would not matter that much to this one, he suspected. There were many causes for burning; a demon more or less would not save her body nor her soul. Only the truth could do that, and it was William's duty to find it.

Still, she was beautiful. Her inquisitor's admiration would give her little comfort in the days of trial, but she had it.

* * *

The Second Day

There was a second party to examine, as there usually was when a nun was brought to the Inquisition, and William preferred to examine the second before the first. On the first day of inquisition, William turned left at the base of the stair, away from the woman's cell and toward her paramour's, just close enough to hear her screams, if it came to that.

William motioned the guards to silence as he approached, preferring to observe unannounced while he could. Through the narrow slit in the door, he watched as the monk, nowhere near as young or comely as his partner, paced the short length of the cell, mumbling to himself, before throwing himself down on his knees. He rocked back and forth, hands clasped before him, fingers moving as if over unseen beads.

"Open the door," he said when he had watched as long as was useful.

The monk looked up with the air of a wild beast as the door opened. He flung himself toward the door, scrabbling at the floor stones. At first William thought the man must surely be making a desperate and hopeless bid to escape, but then the man's arms wrapped around William's feet in supplication.

"My lord, my lord, have mercy on this poor sinner," he babbled, kneading William's ankles in a manner both embarrassing and somewhat painful. "I am Horace, my lord, and I have sinned, but I repent it all, I repent of everything."

"I am not your lord, nor even your judge on this earth," William replied and tried to shake the man from his feet. "And obviously you have sinned. My purpose is to discover what precisely your sins have been, and if we have already seen the worst of them."

"My sins are as simple as I am, my lord," Horace insisted. His fingernails still scraped the leather of William's shoes, but at last he desisted and sat back on his heels, the better to look up at William with pleading eyes. "She tempted me, seduced with me with her feminine lures. I was weak at the test, that is all."

"That may well be true, but I have heard whispers that the company you keep is considerably less simple than the company you were discovered in." The name Dolcino had been whispered, and more than whispered. It was enough to bring a simple case of fornication to the attention of the archbishop.

Horace was shaking his head now, so violently he might have been trying to snap his own neck. "No, no, no, no, I am no heretic, no conspirator. I am a humble brother of St. Francis, just like yourself, my lord. I know nothing, nothing at all of such matters."

"Yet you seem to know of what matters I speak, though I have said nothing."

This time William managed to step back in time to avoid the hapless Horace as he fell prostrate again. "Everyone knows, my lord, everyone hears the whispers."

"Of that, I am certain," William said as he backed out of the cell, leaving Horace moaning on the floor as the door swung shut again.

He made his way back to the other end of the long corridor, where he found a far quieter scene. The young nun was sitting quietly on the stone bench inside her cell, her hands clasped in her lap. She did not look up when the door opened, raising her head only when William stood directly before her. Her eyes had cleared somewhat from the night before, regaining some semblance of human intelligence which only increased her beauty.

"What is your name, child?" William said, much more gently than he had spoken before.

She started to speak, but had to clear her throat and moisten her mouth before her voice would function. "Beatrice, my lord."

"Beatrice, you know why you are here?"

"Because I have committed a grave sin," she replied, either calm or still dazed from her ordeal. "Though I did not mean to sin, my lord."

"Few of us intend it, and yet we manage it very well all the same. What was your sin?"

Her head dropped briefly, but by the time she spoke, she had raised her eyes to William's again, her gaze as steady as her voice was not. "The carnal sin."

"You lay with a man, and gave your body to him in lust."

She hesitated, and those eyes closed as though overcome by her shame, though William sensed no shame in her. Either Beatrice was an innocent to an unimaginable degree, or brazen as a heathen in the Holy City. "Yes. I did that."

"Why did you do it?"

"Because I wanted to."

The simplest truth of anything, which concealed more than it revealed. "What other men did you fornicate with?"

"None," she said, her voice a sharp snap with more fire than he had assumed her capable of by now. "None but him."

"And what did you do with him other than fornicate?"

"Nothing." The word was soft, reduced to a hoarse whisper after her previous flare of spirit.

"Nothing? I find that difficult to believe. You did nothing but spread your legs for him?" He ignored her slight gasp; whatever pity he felt for her, Beatrice had given up her right to indignation. "Did you speak of anything?"

"Yes, of course we spoke."

"Of what?"

"Our duties. Our prayers. The village. My sisters in the convent and his brothers in the monastery."

"Of whom did you speak?"

"The abbess. The librarian. The gardener. Old Sister Hilda. I don't know, just idle talk, as anyone would."

"Did you speak of people outside the monastery or nunnery, or the village? Of people you never met? Did you speak of religious matters?"

"We spoke of God and the holy book. He told me he knew that what we did together was no sin in the eyes of God, and I believed him." Her gaze fell, like a cloud descending over the sun. "He is a wise scholar, and I cannot read more than my own name."

He nodded absently and turned to leave. Beatrice was beginning to shut down again; he would get little else of use from her today, and he had enough to give a first report to the archbishop in the morning. Her words stopped his exit halfway through the door.

"He loves me."

William paused, then decided duty and pity did not have to be exclusive. "Perhaps. But God loves you more, and will serve you better as a lover."

She did not answer. Her fingers lay slack on her lap, and her eyes were once again filled with nothing. William left her to the emptiness.

His long stride bore him halfway down the corridor before his ears caught the faint, but frantic whispering. He squinted into the darkness until he was close enough to see that the guards were gone from Horace's cell, replaced by the dim shape of a person covered in a traveler's cloak with their face pressed against the slit in the door. Instinct and logic compelled William to hasten his step, but the slap of his feet made the stranger look up. William had the briefest glimpse of a pale face in lamplight before the stranger vanished into the shadows.

William reached the cell moments later. The corridor would soon branch off in several directions, making pursuit futile. He glanced into the cell, but Horace was now lying on the stone bench with his face to the wall, indubitably feigning slumber.

Momentarily stymied, William left to await the pleasure of the archbishop.

* * *

The Third Day

"This is what happens when you build a convent and a monastery too close together," William concluded. "As I have always said."

"Yes. Well. Brother Horace is clearly hiding something," the archbishop mused, his fingers steepled like the roof of his own cathedral over the ornate wood of his desk. "Especially if you are correct in your tale of an unsanctioned visitor."

"I am," William replied, suppressing his impatience.

"And what of our young nun?"

"A foolish girl, without question, tempted from her vows by what she believed was love." There were, after all, a limited number of explanations for why a woman so lovely had chosen such a man for her lover, a man who as far as William could see had no graces of mind or spirit to compensate for his own lack of beauty. She had received no worldly compensations for her favors, nor did she require any. Heresy was still a possibility, but she did not have the manner of the heretic desperate for escape, nor of the heretic desperate to die. That left only love. "I will question her one more time, but after that, I would recommend returning her to the charge of her abbess. The nunnery is nearby, she can be easily retrieved if we require her testimony."

The archbishop nodded and flattened his bejeweled hands on the smooth wood. "Very well. If she confesses and repents, she may go home. Concentrate all your energy on the other. I detect the stench of heresy about him, not the least in his seduction of that nun with Dolcinian lies."

"And you have not burned a Dolcinian in quite some time," William noted.

The archbishop glowered, but said nothing.

* * *

The Fourth Day

First he would handle the easier matter of Beatrice. He was relieved that her situation was not so dire as he had first assumed, and relieved to see her looking more lively as the door opened. A cup of water sat next to her on the bench, and a plate sat next to the door, still bearing a film of grease streaked with the marks of an eager tongue.

"You seem much better today," William remarked, bracing himself against the bright smile she turned towards him.

"I am, my lord," she replied. "Thank you for the food."

The food had not been William's doing, but he saw no reason to correct her assumption. "The Lord feeds the body and soul, if you trust in him."

"I do trust in him," she said with that same melting smile. Whatever Horace's other sins, William could never judge him for this one.

"I am glad to hear you say that." He sat next to her on the bench so as not to loom over her; he needed to comfort her as much as cow her now, bring her back into the loving embrace of the Church. "Beatrice, little sister, there is no reason you need to remain here now."

She gave a tiny laugh, charming as bells. "I have been praying that I would hear you say that."

"Then your prayers are answered. Pray again with me now, and all will be well. Confess your sin, repent of it, and God will forgive you. And then you may go home to your sisters with a clean soul."

Her smile faded then. "I cannot repent, my lord."

The surprise took a moment to register, for his mind to confirm what his ears had just heard. "You cannot repent? Why in the name of Saint Francis's favorite cuckoo would you say something like that?"

"I cannot repent because I did not sin," she said, as if that would be explanation enough to satisfy a church mouse, let alone an Inquisitor of the Holy Church.

"You sinned," he corrected with an attempt at patience. "As you told me yourself not two days ago, you committed sins of the flesh with another who has taken the vow of chastity."

"I have had two days alone to think about it, and I believe Brother Horace was right when he told me that there was no sin in love, no fault in God's eyes." Her face was peaceful, utterly content with her recantation.

William closed his eyes for a moment, then looked at her fiercely. "Beatrice, Horace does not love you. He accused you of being the one to tempt him into sin."

"Perhaps I did, for I am a woman," she said, contemplation lending her the solemn air of a stone Madonna. "And perhaps he does not love me, perhaps he never did. In that case, the sin is in his heart, and you may take his confession. But I loved him, and God commands us to love with all our hearts. I did nothing wrong."

An hour of counseling, cajoling, and threatening her with all the fires of the earth and the afterlife did nothing to sway her. At last William felt his entire being seized with frustration, and he left her to storm down the hall to the man who had filled her with such theological error that she now risked her life and soul for an erroneous love.

It was a different man who awaited him than he had seen before. Brother Horace sat on his bench with the upright posture of the just, as serene in his manner as Beatrice, but with far less spiritual justification. William was not impressed.

"You have preached blasphemous lies to an innocent sister of your own order, leading her into sins both corporeal and spiritual," he snapped as soon as he entered the cell. "There can be no doubt that you have done even more than that. Confess to your heresy while there is still some hope for your soul!"

"I am no heretic, my lord," Horace said with a smile that made his eyes squint up. "In fact, I am a helpless victim of that sorceress you are so quick to judge innocent."

In a second, William could see where this was leading, and was helpless to stop it. "Cease this at once, before you damn yourself irrevocably."

"I cannot do anything but tell the truth. Beatrice is a heretic and a witch. It was she who seduced me with her blasphemy and her magic, made me believe I committed no sin by lying with her."

"Familiar words, and still I am supposed to believe that it took sorcery to persuade you to bind your flesh to a beautiful young girl?"

Horace's face was set in its smug, pious grimace. "She took me to her bed, and under it, I saw books of dark magic and heretical teachings. She said she meant to destroy all the clergy who defied Fra Dolcino with her magic, but she cast a spell on me so that I could tell nobody about it."

"Until now," William muttered darkly and spun on his heel before the fraying strands of his temper snapped.

* * *

The Fifth Day

"The books were found in the girl's cell," the archbishop said, tapping his finger on one of the books in question. "The abbess herself discovered them. No books of magic, but seven tracts penned by Fra Dolcino himself, and that is more than enough."

"Beatrice cannot read," William protested with gritted teeth. "I find it difficult to credit her with heretical scholarship, let alone a great knowledge of arcane black arts."

"But she spouts the rhetoric of Dolcino, and the books were in her possession."

"She heard that rhetoric from Horace, and I have little doubt that whoever came to Horace's cell that night came to tell him that those books had been placed in Beatrice's room." William could barely keep the snarl out of his voice, and the archbishop looked at him with pity.

"It is difficult to condemn a lovely young girl," he said, tapping his finger again. "But evil often wears a beautiful face. We have both seen it before. And woman is, in her inherent nature, a vessel for sin and destruction."

"I do not accept that as a basis for the destruction of a life," William insisted, though the archbishop was looking at the books and no longer paying him any attention. "A much more thorough investigation will be necessary to ascertain the truth of the situation."

"That won't be necessary, no," the archbishop murmured, running his finger down a page. "I thank you, Brother William, for your excellent service to the Church. I release you from your duty in this matter."

* * *

The Sixth Day

He left the city as soon as he could, with a prayer that he would never hear anything about the subsequent course of events there. Before he left, he paid one last visit to Beatrice, but she was deep in prayer and would not look at him. He laid his hand on her head in blessing, glad enough not to speak. Nothing either of them said or did could change anything now; the truth had been rendered irrelevant before it could even be found.

For the better part of a fortnight, he rode north until he found a monastery far away from the places Horace and Beatrice had called home. Even there, word of the scandal had spread and all the monks were full of questions, but William would not speak of it, not even to the abbot. He secluded himself in his cell in the pilgrim's hospice and prayed: for her soul and for his own, and for an end to dreams.

But dark eyes haunted him for many days and nights, wreathed in flames.

 

 

 


End file.
